10 Awesome Halloween Costumes for Trans Men 2025

Halloween is nearly upon us. Compared to any other holiday, Halloween is unofficially the most beloved day of the year for LGBTQIA+ people. This week’s post features some of the best and most reliable costume ideas for transmasculine folks.

Why do queer people love Halloween, anyway?

There isn’t a single reason, but several key ideas. The most popular theory is that Halloween provides an excellent excuse for LGBTQIA+ people to transgress traditional gender roles and expression.

For the majority of US history, individuals were criminalized for crossdressing – but Halloween provided a singular day out of the year that anyone could bend the rules. With enough confidence, Halloween afforded people in the past the perfect excuse to crossdress for an assumed laugh.

Today, we live in a society where we are freer to express our gender identity regardless of sex assigned at birth – although these rights are under attack by religious fundamentalists. Yet, Halloween still provides comfort since it embodies the spirit of exploration. It’s a costume, you’re dressing up; you’re entitled to have fun with it.

One final reason LGBTQIA+ may gravitate towards Halloween is that queer people are statistically more likely to identify as pagan. Compared to other religions, paganism, Wicca, and universalist beliefs have a stable history of being inclusive towards LGBTQIA+ identities.

Fundamentalist Christians despise Halloween because it’s the most outwardly pagan holiday still commonly celebrated (and not co-opted by Christianity). Even if you don’t identify with witchy beliefs, there’s something quaint about witchcraft that draws queer folks in.


Top Halloween Costumes for Transgender Men

Author’s Note:
Clothing, on its own, does not have any inherent gender. It’s fabric composed of various natural and synthetic fibers. On the other hand, humans have associated specific styles with gender for thousands of years – but these associations vary based on time and place.

Clothing has no gender. It is possible to still feel a certain way about clothing due to our gendered notions of clothing, and therefore possible to feel dysphoric because clothing may not affirm our gender identity. These two statements can coexist. Further, you’re not less authentic or transgender because you like or dislike specific styles.

1. Pop Culture Icons

Later in this list, I’ll go over specific trends for 2025 – this section is related to generic characters, actors, and other entities. You can dress up as literally anyone or anything. Don’t let this list (or any list, for that matter) stop you from having a good time.

Queer people make fantastic fanbases. We hyperfixate and gravitate towards content more heavily than general audiences (Is it autism? Well, correlation isn’t causation.). This category includes characters from any media format, like anime, television, film, comics, and books. These are all fair choices and provide a bonus that you’ll feel especially connected to this costume.

The only caveat to these costumes is that the more obscure or less-known your content is, there is lower the chance people will recognize or understand your costume. Be prepared to explain it. Over and over. If you’re going for a costume to lend towards passing, obscure costumes won’t add much since there’s no recognizability factor.

2. Can’t Go Wrong with the Classics

Halloween costumes are generally less diverse for men compared to women. In the words of Mean Girls, “Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it.” Feminine costumes range without limits (“A sexy quint from sexy Jaws catching sexy sharks, sexy Eleanor Roosevelt or sexy Rosa Parks, I can be a sexy pirate or a sexy ballet dancer. I can be a sexy doctor and cure some sexy cancer!”).

The most traditional costumes for men include vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and Frankenstein. All of these costumes have a distinct masculine association that can invoke gender euphoria – so they’re fairly common picks amongst transmasculine folks.

Frankenstein resonates with the transgender notion of building oneself and body dysphoria. Werewolves remind us of transformation, transition, and the feeling of being at home (or not) in one’s body. Monsters, as a whole, compare similarly to how transgender people feel isolated, misunderstood, and ostracized by society.

3. Your Favorite Cryptid <3

Folktakes fascinate everyone. Likely due to queer people being grouped with sexual deviancy over the centuries, LGBTQIA+ people are more kink positive – which includes the “monster f*cker” category. 

Cryptids have become popular throughout the past decade, with entities like the Babadook and Mothman gaining significant fans. In a sense, these characters are new-age monsters compared to tired classics from the 1800s, which is part of the allure. Given their current cultural relevance, a decent number of people will recognize your costume.

4. Marvel or DC?

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a costume more “boy” than superheroes. There’s something remarkably masculine about them, and even if there are valid criticisms regarding the superhero film industry, most of these characters are literally made to become costumes.

However, there is one major aspect to keep in mind here. Most superhero costumes are more boyish rather than inherently masculine. The classics (Superman, Batman, Thor, Iron Man, etc.) are going to be considered childish due to how they’re already marketed. Instead, consider superhero costumes marketed towards adult men – like Deadpool and Wolverine (which are both topical this year due to their 2024 release).

5. Howdy, Cowboy!

The Wild West offers a wealth of costumes to choose from, and cowboys have a unique queer history from those early years on the frontier. The occupation and time allowed individuals to live outside large-scale judgment back home, which lent itself to the lawless atmosphere we most associate with “the wild west.” Even in more modern depictions like Brokeback Mountain, cowboys are afforded enough seclusion to live more authentically while traveling from place to place for work.

There’s something incredibly boyish about it all, which may be one reason transmasculine people romanticize the Wild West. At its core, cowboys revolve around rugged individualism. It’s also a predominantly male occupation, so cowboy costumes are fairly easy to pass in.

6. Mr. Pedro Pascal

He’s been in the Hollywood spotlight for the past couple of years, which has polarized American audiences into either loving or hating him.

Most known for his work on The Last of Us and The Mandalorian, Pedro embodies the healthy masculinity that transmasculine people seek. He’s also gone on the record as an unapologetic transgender ally. And, regardless of his role, Pedro is identifiable, which makes all of his characters and persona easy to costume. 

7. Into the Wasteland

With its new live-action television series, Fallout is back in the public eye with a new influx of its fanbase. Fallout, Mad Max, and similar content all fall into a general dystopian sci-fi apocalypse category – which inspires many with gender envy and euphoria. Gender expression in these futures is always less strict than reality and still offers fantasy-based escapism. After all, these realities present dire circumstances where gender identity and roles matter little compared to nuclear war and the apocalypse.

There’s also some joke about how much transgender people love Fallout: New Vegas, buuuut that’s getting off-topic.

8. Are You Kenough?

The Barbie movie may have come out two years ago, but it still has a strong fanbase. People either loved or hated it – but the film focused on a lot of social justice issues that drew in queer audiences. As the main male character, Ken has a complicated relationship with masculinity while standing in Barbie’s shadow. 

The entire film is about self-discovery and finding one’s authentic identity in a mass-marketed world. Regardless, Ken offers a wealth of costume ideas that range from complex and fabulous to simple outfits that are easy to throw together.

9. Rock Out!

We’ve returned to an era where male rock stars are becoming looser with gender expression based on current fashion trends. Machine Gun Kelly, Yungblud, and Bad Bunny toy with gender expression and societal expectations similarly to male stars in the 1980s.

During that time period, gender-bending glam fashion and androgyny were at their peak. David Bowie, Prince, and Freddie Mercury were just a handful of a (then) new music scene that rebelled against the status quo of gender. And given these factors, rock star personas are relatively easy for transgender people to use as costumes since they’re highly recognizable and simpler to pass in.

10. Or Simply Go Meta

If you’ve got a sense of humor and don’t want to go all out with any of the above costumes, you could go with something self-referential. Wear a button or pin that says “Trans Icon” or “GOP Nightmare Fuel.” Get a shirt with “I’m the scary transgender person the media warned you about” or “Boo! Transgender!” written on it. You’ll get points for cleverness, but these costumes are understandably less interesting than others.

Remember: You can dress up as literally anyone or anything. These are just suggestions to get you inspired.

As a final note, make sure you put comfort first when deciding a Halloween costume. Physical and emotional comfort will play a massive role in whether your Halloween will turn out well – so weigh the pros and cons between creativity, safety, and dysphoria. 

If you regularly bind, make sure your body is able to handle several hours of compression while you’re out. And lastly, Halloween is the hallmark of autumn, which means it’s easier to layer outfits. Many guys mistakenly believe baggy clothes will help them pass better, but the more effective route is layering your outfit to successfully hide curves that may cause gender dysphoria.